


Learning to Breathe

by Elvaron



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-19
Updated: 2014-12-19
Packaged: 2018-03-02 04:21:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2799404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elvaron/pseuds/Elvaron
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>He thinks he understands at last how it is to be the one left behind.</i> Tentoo, and reflections on loss, and life, and life after death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Learning to Breathe

He thinks he understands at last how it is to be the one left behind. He watches -- himself -- step into the TARDIS, watches ... his ... beloved ship whirr and disappear, and as the connection snaps and silence more deafening than anything he has ever known falls across his mind, he thinks that he can’t have one heart, because one heart shouldn’t be able to hurt this much.

Rose looks at him and he smiles for her, because he can see the glimmer of unshed tears in her eyes, the shadows of hurt that he put there - twice, _twice_ , the schism of lives ripped apart forever, the type of pain that she should never have had to experience. And he looks at that pain, even as anger bubbles up between the cracks of his shattered, _human_ heart, and he holds on to that hate and refuses to let go.

*

If he tried, if he could ever bring himself to delve into it, he’s sure that he would be able to see the reasons why his other self left ( _abandoned_ ) him and Rose here. It’s him, after all, and he knows himself, knows that he must have believed that it was best thing to do for them, knows that there are good and justifiable reasons, logical reasons, why he would have acted the way he did. But he doesn’t want to think about it, he doesn’t want to justify it, and it’s easier to cling to the other reasons that he knows were as much a part of that decision as the others - the towering arrogance of the last Time Lord, believing that all of time and space to be his responsibility, the cowardice of that Time Lord, who had lost so much and couldn’t bear to lose again.

For all that his other self might have pretended that he had good and clever reasons for what he did, he knows the truth - he was the boy who ran from the Untempered Schism, after all. And never stopped running.

*

Time takes the razor edge off the pain, much faster than he ever thought possible. He thinks, maybe, that it’s a product of his human side - humans, whose lives burn so much brighter for their briefness, who forge on ahead through the most unendurable of circumstances, looking ever towards the future. 

_Besides_ , a part of his mind that still speaks with Donna’s voice says, _It’s high time you got off your arse and stopped sulking._

He misses Donna. He misses her so much.

But even scars ache sometimes, and when the wind turns and brings with it the smell of salt from the sea, his mind turns back to a bay and the sound of whirring that he’ll never again hear with his waking ears. 

*

 _Brother_ , his other self calls him, and he rejects that with all the strength of his single, human, heart.

*

He feels it when his other self dies. Every molecule in his body cries out, reverberating, taking flight, seeking to soar into the sky and into the infinite beyond. He feels himself falling, feels his body trying to disintegrate and regenerate even though it can’t, and he thinks that it’s hardly fair - that he has finally learnt how to live in this new world and this new life, and again his other self comes to take it away.

Rose calls his name, and he tries to smile, but his world is fire, and everything burns even as it falls apart. He will die here, he knows, his life intrinsically wound with the other, vanishing off into the unknown. And he has never felt so scared.

But as the fire in his flesh burns brighter, as the pain becomes so intense it almost becomes song, he feels her arms around him, pulling him down, down, _down_ , holding him fast, together. He feels her heart pounding against his chest as she cradles him close, that comforting single heartbeat, and he remembers that his is the same, the very same, and he clings onto that steady rhythm, curls fingers and nails in, his throat clenched so tight that the scream in the back of it can’t even escape. 

_I’ve got you, _Rose says, and her arms are the only thing holding him together. _I’ve got you, and I’ll never let you go again._ __

_Rose_ , he gasps out, because she is his anchor, and always, ever been his anchor. Because she is here, with him, not with his other self, perishing far away and alone. 

It is such an irony, that here his life is beginning - this life which he thought so empty, so bereft, _this_ is the life of light and joy and love - while in the parallel universe his other self’s life is ending, a life with all of time and space at his fingertips, yet marked with pain and loneliness so acute that it cuts him to the bone. And he can feel it - he can feel the void in his other self’s chest where two hearts ought to be, the splinters of guilt and grief that never passed, the knife edge sharp as though Bad Wolf Bay was yesterday. He can see it now, the quagmire of darkness and bad decisions, tripping from one end of the galaxy to the other, alone and desolate. He had the TARDIS, he had everything, and nothing at all.

And he sees it now, now at the last, he sees the curse that his other self bestowed on him as the gift it was.

He can see the bright flare of golden regenerative energy, so hauntingly familiar, and for the first time he watches it as it spirals up and away. He never wondered before where it went, but he wonders now - there’s always been a part of him that felt that regeneration was much like death, something lost, something not-quite-the-same reborn in its place. And he thinks, even as his other self’s features blaze with light, morphing and changing into something new, that perhaps there is a part that leaves, never to return. 

Humans would call it a soul. Time Lords put no name to it, and in their wisdom would scoff at such a notion. But he isn’t a Time Lord. Hasn’t been, for a very long time. And he can’t help but wonder where that splinter, that fragment would go, spiralling off into the dark, into nothingness. 

Some impulse moves him, something that defies Time Lord wisdom and sense, something that compels him to reach out, calling to it. He doesn’t know if will work, he doesn’t know anything, and it _doesn’t matter_ , because this is him now, part of the species that he’s loved and protected for so much of his long life - this is the part of that species that will rush into the unknown simply because it’s _there_ , that will stand against the dark even knowing that they can stand no chance, whose spirit and courage burns brighter than all reason. Because his human heart aches, cries out, for the part of him he left behind, the one he abandoned on a beach when he took Rose and walked off into a life brighter than he could ever have imagined. 

Because he is the Doctor, the man who makes others better.

And he grips Rose’s hand tighter - she is his anchor, after all, the one who keeps him grounded here, the one who has always healed the physician - and he reaches out to that lost and lonely fragment, washed afloat on a wave of golden energy. _Come home,_ he says, and in his mind’s eye he opens his arms to it. _There has been enough of death. It is time - time to learn to live again._

 _Come home, brother._

__\--_ _

**Author's Note:**

> Extremely stream of consciousness, something written more than 1.5 years ago, recently rediscovered. It was supposed to segue into a longer fix-it for Ten, but I've moved on from that idea now.


End file.
